By hitting his 600th career home run, Jim Thome has entered one of baseball’s most exclusive neighborhoods. By my count, he joins Henry Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. as the only players to reach that milestone without artificial aid.

If Thome wasn’t already a certain Hall of Famer, he is now. Even in this era, 600 homers remains a magic number. He will have my vote on the first ballot.

But as worthy as such slugging is, something seems a bit amiss about Thome joining such baseball royalty.

Maybe it’s because I’m thinking too much about Thome in recent seasons when he has been little more than a decent platoon DH and pinch hitter. He hasn’t exactly blasted away with long balls this season, spending more time on the disabled list than the active roster and taking 64 games to get the 11 he needed for the milestone.

Maybe it’s because Thome is the epitome of a DH, and that makes him less than a complete player. The Cooperstown eye test is not without merit, and Thome looks more like a beer-league Hall of Famer than Cooperstowner.

Maybe it’s because I’m put off by the fact he never has been one of the game’s very best players in any of his 21 seasons. He never has finished higher than fourth in MVP voting, and he made five All-Star teams.

Maybe it’s because his other career numbers don’t overwhelm. Besides homers, Thome is not top 10 in any other stat except strikeouts, where he is second. His .277 batting average isn’t special. He ranks 150th in hits and 20th in slugging percentage.

Maybe it’s his generation. Thome put up most of his numbers in an era when offense was produced at an unprecedented rate. Performance-enhancing drugs played more than a little role in that but the clean players—that includes Thome—still are dinged.

When Thome hit 49 homers in 2001, for example, 11 others also topped 40. While we have come to find out that at least five of those sluggers were fueled by performance-enhancers, Thome’s exploits still seem a bit watered down.

Maybe it’s because I’ve only been voting for two years and still am figuring out who truly is deserving. It isn’t as easy as you think. For example, I voted for Edgar Martinez in his first year on the ballot but not his second—and he didn’t do anything between those years to make him any less worthy. In hindsight, I believe I was caught up too much in numbers my first year.

Or maybe it’s just this: Thome simply doesn’t belong in the same neighborhood as Aaron, Ruth, Mays or Griffey.

Those guys are icons, among the greatest players ever. Complete players. They hit .300, stole 20-plus bases and played Gold Glove defense. They all won multiple Gold Gloves except for Ruth, and you can’t question his all-round game. He was a two-time 20-game winner.

Without question, those players had careers greater than Thome. But that doesn’t mean Thome hasn’t had a great career.

Thome has done plenty more that hit homers, too. He has a .403 career on-base percentage, which ranks 50th all-time. His .961 OPS is 17th all-time. He is 27th in RBIs, ahead of Hall of Famer sluggers such as Harmon Killebrew and Willie Stargell. He is 53rd in WAR among position players (as calculated by baseball-reference.com), again not Ruthian but superior to plenty of Cooperstowners, including Roberto Alomar, Eddie Murray and Tony Gwynn.

Thome’s integrity and passion for the game always have been worthy of the Hall. As a kid, Thome was such a big Dave Kingman fan that he once hopped into the dugout at Wrigley Field in an attempt to meet his hero. Earlier this year when we talked, Thome shied away from talking about 600. As I pressed him a bit, he patted me on the leg and with a knowing smile said that, if the time comes, “We’ll have some fun.”